Rahul Gandhi said that instead of getting involved in the Sanatan dharma row, the leaders should focus on the poor and their issues as they have been the party's traditional vote bank, the sources said.
A day after the Centre put the Telangana issue on the backburner, Congress Members of Parliament from the region are likely to resign on Thursday to protest the government's action. Sources said 12 Congress MPs from the Telangana region in Andhra Pradesh have decided to resign and are holding deliberations on whether to send their resignations to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar or party chief Sonia Gandhi. Karimnagar MP Ponnam Prabhakar said he has decided to put in his papers
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday elicited the views of their junior cabinet colleagues and Congress leaders from Andhra Pradesh on the Telangana statehood demand, which has virtually divided the party on regional lines.
The Congress on Monday backed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's insistence on a consensus to solve the issue of a separate Telangana state saying the vexed matter "cannot be decided in distress."
The sources said the Congress is the binding force for the opposition bloc and the stronger the Congress emerges the better for the alliance.
With the Congress all set to accept the long-pending demand for a separate state of Telangana, the matter is slated for discussion at the party's working committee meeting to be convened before the monsoon session commences on August 5
Seeking to mount pressure on the ruling Congress leaders, the Telangana political Joint Action Committee on Monday asked them to quit their posts and join the "strike by all sections of people" scheduled to start from next month.
The Congress government in Andhra Pradesh was left red-faced on Saturday when two of its Cabinet ministers were arrested by the police in Mahbubnagar district to avert a showdown between them. Endowments Minister Jupally Krishna Rao and Information and Public Relations Minister D K Aruna were taken into police custody at two separate places and shifted to different police stations as tension mounted in Gadwal constituency in view of the former's paada yatra (foot march).
Amid a political crisis in Jharkhand, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha legislative party leader Champai Soren on Wednesday called on Governor C P Radhakrishnan and urged him to accept his claim to form the government at the earliest.
As the Centre grapples with the Telangana crisis, Andhra Pradesh Governor E S L Narasimhan on Saturday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and is understood to have briefed him about the situation in the agitation-hit region.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Thursday dismissed reports of divisions within the ruling Congress on the emotive Telangana issue and asked everyone to wait till the Justice BN Srikrishna Committee report on the statehood issue is released on Thursday.
Seven political and administrative reasons were given to convince the Congress leadership while proposing the creation of Rayal-Telangana. Vicky Nanjappa reports
The Congress on Tuesday suffered a major upset in Himachal Pradesh at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha elections which were marred by cross-voting in all the three states though it won three seats in Karnataka while the saffron party pocketed an extra seat in Uttar Pradesh.
The B N Srikrishna Committee, set up by the Centre to look into the demands for the creation of a separate Telangana, has said that so far, it has not received any official report from the ruling Congress party and main opposition Telugu Desam Party.Committee chairman Justice BN Srikrishna, who arrived in Hyderabad on Thursday to discuss the issue with various political parties, said that some leaders of the two parties had presented their own reports to the committee.
The Congress on Wednesday said the Telangana issue was a very delicate matter and that each step has to be taken after due consultations. "It is a very delicate matter in which each step has to be taken after consultations," party spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan told reporters while replying to a volley of questions on the stand of the party and the way forward on the issue.On whether the issue had been badly handled by the party, she said, "No".
In an extraordinary step, the Lok Sabha on Tuesday suspended eight Congress members from Telangana region for four days for repeatedly causing disruptions over separate statehood issue.
The reverses for the BJP in the Hindi heartland threw wide open the 2019 Lok Sabha elections which until a few months ago appeared to be in the grip of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party.
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao met his Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray as a part of his campaign against the BJP.
Madhu Yashki, one of the suspended MPs from the Telangana, said that it made little sense to quit the Congress and form a new party because only a national party can ensure the formation of Telangana.
TRS leader K T Rama Rao confirmed that Kishor's Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) is working for TRS officially.
Stating that party president Sonia Gandhi was their 'last hope' to resolve the Telangana issue, Congress members of Parliament from the region on Monday decided to seek her intervention and also raise their demand in the winter session of Parliament.
Telangana Congress members of Parliament on Friday asserted that they would participate in the 'rail roko' scheduled to be held in the region for three days from on Saturday in support of the separate statehood demand, despite appeals from the party not to do so.
Ratcheting up pressure on the United Progressive Alliance government on Telangana issue, a senior Congress leader on Sunday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in attacking Home Minister P Chidambaram for not delivering on the statehood "promise" even as the 'rail roko' agitation disrupted normal life in the region for the second day.
Rumblings within Congress over its decision to form Telangana grew on Friday with its seven MPs, a state minister and seven MLAs from Andhra and Rayalaseema regions quitting amid indications that some more are likely to follow suit.
Reddy stated that KCR's statement on proposing a new constitution is an extension of the idea of the BJP.
There has been mounting pressure on Congress MPs and ministers from Andhra and Rayalaseema region to quit as Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is all set to submit the formal note on the proposed Telangana state before the Union Cabinet on October 3.
Efforts to forge unity in the opposition ranks gained momentum on Monday with the Congress asserting that a 'vast majority' of non-Bharatiya Janata Party outfits will meet soon, after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar met its president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi.
The ruling Congress MPs, legislators and state ministers from Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh on Friday said they would resign en masse on July 4 in support of their demand for a separate state. This decision was taken on Friday after a meeting of the leaders from the region attended by seven MPs, 18 MLAs, nine MLCs and nine ministers in Hyderabad.
There was no immediate response from the Aam Aadmi Party over the matter.
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, senior leaders K C Venugopal, P Chidambaram and Salman Khurshid were among the party's top brass taking part in the satyagraha at Rajghat.
Ratcheting up pressure, Congress ministers and MPs from Telangana on Wednedsay asked the party high command not to further delay the formation of a separate state even as the party indicted that the consultation process at the national level will begin soon.
The Congress on Sunday gave a call to party leaders in poll-bound states to work with unity to ensure victory that will 'set the tone' for 2024 Lok Sabha polls even as it showed willingness to forge an alliance of 'like-minded' parties.
Tharoor said Rahul Gandhi's disqualification from Lok Sabha following his conviction in a 2019 defamation case has generated a 'surprising wave of Opposition unity' with many parties having begun to feel the truth of the adage -- united we stand, divided we fall.
After YSR Congress President Jagan Mohan Reddy's landslide victory in Kadapa by-polls the Congress is chalking out plans counter his growing popularity. In a recent meeting, Congress MLAs pointed out that formation of Telangana may be their only option. Vicky Nanjappa reports.
'I declined the generous offer of Congress to join the party as part of the EAG and take responsibility for the elections. In my humble opinion, more than me the party needs leadership and collective will to fix the deep rooted structural problems through transformational reforms,' Kishor said in a tweet.
Pawar said even during the Emergency years there was a feeling in political circles that nothing would change for the next 25 years, but people ushered in change the very next year in 1977.
Speaking to reporters in Mysuru, he said, he is not giving priority to such things and was concentrating on strengthening the party.
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government is ready to make all the amendments suggested by the Bharatiya Janata Party on the Telangana bill barring one.
Three ministers from Andhra-Rayalaseema regions submitted their resignations to Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy late on Thursday night even as at least 15 others are understood to have backed out following a stern warning by the high command.
The fissures in the Congress over the Telangana issue came to the fore in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday when Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, along with some other party Members of Parliament, joined a Telugu Desam Party protest against the decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh. Jaganmohan, son of late Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, even stormed the well of the House, joining the TDP members. The TDP members were carrying placards saying 'We want united Andhra Pradesh'.
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